New York Supplier Fired by Wal-Mart Had 20-Year Ties to Retailer

By Renee Dudley -
Dec 8, 2012

A supplier fired by Wal-Mart Stores
Inc. (WMT) after a Bangladesh factory burned down last month was a New
York-based firm with a more than 20-year relationship with the
world’s largest retailer, according to a person with knowledge
of the matter.

Success Apparel, the supplier, said in a statement it
didn’t know its clothes were being made there. Wal-Mart said
after the Nov. 24 blaze that killed more than 100 people it had
fired one of its suppliers, without identifying the company.

Success said in the e-mailed statement that it placed an
order with Simco, a Wal-Mart-approved supplier. Simco in turn
subcontracted 7 percent of the order to Tuba Group, which owns
the Tazreen Design Ltd. factory, Success said. At least five
Wal-Mart suppliers, including Success, made clothes there this
year, documents found by a labor-rights group show.

“This factory is not on our matrix and we have never done
business with them,” Success said in the statement. “We have
been a trusted supplier to Walmart for over two decades, never
had any violations and complied with the highest ethical and
safety standards that our company sets forth.”

Success “will continue to diligently work to insure that
all workers who we engage worldwide are treated with the utmost
regard for their safety and well-being,” the company said in
the statement.

Success sourced Wal-Mart private-label shorts from the
Tazreen factory via Simco, production reports provided by the
Worker Rights Consortium, a labor-rights monitoring group based
in Washington, show.

“We do not comment on supplier relationships,” Kevin Gardner, a Wal-Mart spokesman, said in an e-mail.

Purchase orders, shipment statements, inventory reports and
other documents show that another New York-based supplier for
Wal-Mart and a third in California sourced merchandise from
Tazreen this year. Besides Simco, another company in Bangladesh
also manufactured apparel there for Wal-Mart, the records show.

As recently as September, five of 14 production lines at
the factory were making shirts and pajamas for Wal-Mart, an
income report shows.